Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

A group of more than 160 charities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), advocacy organizations, and others sent a letter today under the banner of the People’s Vaccine Alliance to World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala imploring the WTO not to accept the proposed delay of a decision to extend waiver of IP rights under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to therapeutics and diagnostics. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on December 6 announced support for delaying the deadline on an extension decision.

Intel Corp. has asked the United States District Court for the District of Delaware to throw out a $4.1 billion patent lawsuit from VLSI Technology in a filing unsealed Friday, December 9. Intel claimed that VLSI “has repeatedly failed to disclose its full ownership as required,” and the company’s “opaque ownership structure is an entrenched feature of hedge fund-driven patent litigation.” In its filing, Intel argued that VLSI has failed to comply with U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly’s standing order for the company to identify “every individual and corporation with a direct or indirect interest.”

he United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sent out a reminder today to those interested in speaking at an upcoming Public Listening Session on collaboration efforts between the USPTO and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they must sign up to participate by January 5, 2023. The listening session will be held on January 19, 2023. Speakers must attend in person. Those who just wish to listen, virtually or in person, must register for the event by January 17, 2023. The Federal Register Notice announcing the listening session and request for comments on the subject was published on November 7, 2022 and relates to a joint July 2022 announcement of the USPTO and FDA that the Office plans to execute a number of initiatives aimed at lowering drug prices, as directed in July 2021 by President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.”

During an IPWatchdog-hosted webinar held today, panelists reflected on the impact that U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal has had on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) so far and called her handling of the VLSI v. OpenSky case a “giant missed opportunity” to create a roadmap for how the Office will handle bad faith behavior.

Every inventor has, at one time or another, had the moment where all seems lost. Every avenue that could possibly yield a fruitful alleyway towards profitability has been trodden, and each industry contact that could potentially offer a path towards success has been contacted. The item that began as a simple idea, was built into a homemade prototype, and was eventually turned into a real product by a professional design firm, has not gotten the interest from the industry that had been dreamed of. This realization can be a serious cause for grief for those who have spent countless hours defining and tweaking their product, building relationships with designers, patent attorneys, industry insiders, and other inventors, and still have not achieved their ultimate goal of successfully bringing their product to market. These periods of time can be difficult, as it can feel like you are saying goodbye to a friend that has brought you so much hope, and joy throughout the development process.

As we tick down the days until the holidays, there’s still time to make sure that you grab a meaningful present or two for the patent attorney in your life. A few of this year’s options feature authentic products from inventors who have faced uphill battles against well-resourced infringers. Other options on this list are very practical gifts that can help organize electronic accessories or ensure that an attorney’s handwritten notes during invention disclosures are quickly digitized. Finally, there are a couple of gift ideas below that provide a great deal of entertainment value, including one expensive conversation starter incorporating a unique clock technology into an impressively artistic metallic form.

The U.S. Supreme Court today invited the Solicitor General’s views in a copyright case that asks the High Court to grant a petition on the question of whether the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allows a business “to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?” The petition was brought by ML Genius Holdings (Genius), an online platform for transcribing and annotating song lyrics, against Google and LyricFind, which Genius claims breached its website Terms of Service by “stealing Genius’s work and placing the lyrics on its own competing site, drastically decreasing web traffic to Genius as a result.”

This week in Washington IP news, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding an Executive Business Meeting in which they will discuss the Pride in Patent Ownership Act, while several Senate subcommittees hold hearings related to American manufacturing, diversity in entrepreneurship, and increasing access to capital in underserved markets. Elsewhere, IPWatchdog is hosting a webinar discussing USPTO Director Kathi Vidal’s tenure, the USPTO will host a virtual Boardside Chat with Deputy Director Derrick Brent, and the CSIS looks at the latest meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC).

Starlink signals can be manipulated. In fact, they already have been, by unauthorized third parties. The agents are proclaiming their success and letting the world know that there is nothing Starlink can do about it. I’m inclined to agree. A professor at the University of Texas has found a way to use Starlink signals to develop a new global navigation technology that would operate independently of GPS or its European, Russian, and Chinese equivalents (Starlink’s terminals have also been successfully hacked, but that’s a different issue. This article deals with the unauthorized usage and alteration of the Starlink signals).

A number of lower-income countries (LMICs) on Tuesday, December 6, proposed new text to the World Trade Organization (WTO) urging them to adopt it and proceed with an extension of the waiver of IP rights for COVID-19-related technologies under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of IP Rights (TRIPS). The text was sent following the United States’ announcement on the same day that it supports a delay of the deadline to decide whether to extend the waiver to diagnostics and therapeutics pending an International Trade Commission investigation that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has ordered.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Office of the United States Trade Representative says it supports delaying a decision to extend the waiver of IP rights under the TRIPS Agreement to diagnostics and therapeutics and orders an investigation be conducted on the matter by the U.S. International Trade Commission; Ericsson and Apple Settle all patent litigation; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announces the February launch of an accelerated program for patents related to cancer research technology; Pfizer countersues Moderna in an ongoing patent case related to COVID-19 vaccines; Cisco avoids paying $2 billion in fines in a patent infringement case; and Huawei signs a deal with a tech competitor in a landmark licensing agreement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yesterday denied a petition for writ of mandamus asking the Delaware district court to vacate an order to produce certain documents to ensure compliance with Chief Judge Connolly’s standing orders on initial disclosures in patent litigation cases. Nimitz Technologies LLC petitioned the CAFC asking it to vacate a November 10, 2022, order by the Delaware court demanding Nimitz produce documents including communications between Nimitz owner, Mark Hall, his counsel, and patent assertion entity IP Edge and the related entity, Mavexar. Following a failure to timely comply with the standing orders, Nimitz had initially told the court that Hall was the sole owner and LLC member of Nimitz and asserted in a statement that Nimitz “has not entered into any arrangement with a Third-Party Funder, as defined in the Court’s Standing Order Regarding Third-Party Litigation Funding Arrangements.”

Wi-Fi has been universally recognized as a term for non-cellular, wireless connectivity to the Internet for at least two decades, and reliance on Wi-Fi has been increasing as more devices become “connected,” such as smart outlets, TVs, audio systems, and the like, in a connected household. Similarly, consumers have become more dependent on the bandwidth of Wi-Fi for bandwidth-intensive activities, such as streaming video, video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging “metaverse.”

In the United States, our ability to innovate drives our economic advantage. Have policymakers taken that for granted? To find out, Bruce Berman, founder of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, interviewed renowned professor David Teece and Patrick Kilbride of the Global Innovation Policy Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Episode 6, Season 2 of “Understanding IP Matters.” Their wide-ranging conversation explores the relationship between intellectual property rights, investment, and the rule of law.